Life on Earth
by Solo By Choice
Summary: In a universe where humans didn't make first contact on time, an alien crash-lands in a cornfield.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is the beginning of what will be a long story by my standards. I have written more and will continue to work on it, but it may be slow going. Please be patient and tell me what you think.

**CHAPTER ONE**

The day everything changed started off inauspiciously. Jim Kirk figured that was the way with world-changing days: they snuck up on you slowly until you let your guard down and then they jumped you. So it was with this day.

Jim got up early, woken by the rising sun as it shone through his bedroom window and straight into his eyes. He dressed, dragged a comb through his sort-of-thinning hair, and grabbed an apple to eat on the way to the stable. He munched happily on it as he led the horses out onto the field he kept for them, then settled at the base of a large oak tree as they congregated around the muddy brook that ran through the property.

The sky was cloudless. It was going to be a hot day and while the crops could probably do with a bit more rain, Jim wasn't worried. He preferred sunny days anyway. His father had often scolded him that he ought to worry more about the number of bushels per acre and less about his own contentment, but there you were. George Kirk had always been a farmer and if he'd ever dreamed of doing something more, he'd forgotten those dreams long ago. He had no doubt imagined that a 10 year tour of duty would instill in his younger son more of an appreciation for Iowa. In some ways, he'd been right; Jim enjoyed the quiet: no threat of typhoons, neighbors who kept to themselves (they were Amish). He was, for the most part, content.

And yet.

Jim would often find his mind wandering, imagining a life with more excitement, more pizzazz, more bang for his buck. The most exciting thing that happened around here was the occasional bar fight over the outcome of the last football game. No matter how cliché it sounded, Jim wanted something more. He wanted to be a hero.

He'd been one in the marines, sort of, but none of what he'd done then seemed very important in the scheme of things.

Sometimes he wondered if his restlessness was a symptom of something else. Loneliness was the most likely candidate. His best friend lived 4 states away; Carol had moved back to New York and thus prevented him from even meeting David; he hardly ever saw his parents and his brother lived on the other side of the world with his family.

Jim shook his head, tossing the apple core away. _When did you get so maudlin, old man?_ He gave a self-deprecating snort. _No, not old yet. But old enough that I should give up on adventures._ There was too much to do today for that: people to call, deals to finagle, weather channels to watch, and the possibility of a broken drain pipe on the southern quarter to investigate.

/

What started off as a gorgeous day had followed the trend of Midwestern weather and changed to something else entirely by mid-afternoon: cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms. Jim glanced up at the sky as he walked along the gravel road which split the old family property. He didn't so much mind the possibility of getting wet, but he wanted to get the horses inside quickly—lightning made them skittish.

Speaking of—a bright flash caught the corner of his eye and before Jim was even able to think, battle-instincts had caused him to dive into the ditch and something huge, burning, and definitely not lightning roared overhead and landed with an earth-shaking crash.

Jim stayed still, face pressed into the ditch-weeds, until it seemed like the world wasn't going to end after all. He lifted his head to see black smoke caught by the hot wind and blowing over his head. Good thing it wasn't August: brown and dead corn stalks burned like nobody's business. Of course, it wasn't as though most of this field was going to be of any use to him now, what with a meteorite smashed into it. Holding his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose, Jim headed towards the blackened lump in the center of the field.

A meteorite! A clump of carbon from outer space and it was his. Jim grinned into the cloth. Maybe he could sell it. Or get someone to polish it and hang it in his living room in lieu of a deer's head. Gary would have gotten a kick out of that. Jim shook his head. Was it the smoke getting to him or the excitement? He hadn't thought about Gary in years—and it was just a hunk of rock from a bit further away than usual.

By the time Jim reached the meter-deep crater in the earth, the fire had burned out and most of the smoke had been blown away. He stood at the edge, looking down at meteorite, but what he saw didn't much resemble a rock. It was sort of egg-shaped, light grey, and much too smooth except in places where it had what could only be described as dents.

Jim circled it warily. Three-quarters of the way around there was a variation in the shape of the metal. _A door? Why would a meteorite—okay, a thing from space—have a door?_ Maybe that was why he was thinking of Gary again: the dark-haired and somewhat irresponsible fellow marine had introduced him to several sci-fi cult classics and now, looking at this thing… under the bumps, the dirt, and the carbon scoring, there was something distinctly escape pod-ish about it.

Jim's father would probably say that this meant Secret Government Space Station Projects Gone Wrong. Gary, who Jim was more likely to trust with these kinds of things, would have said it meant Extraterrestrial Intelligence. As in aliens.

_Shit._

He probably should have been terrified, should have run back to the street and back home and forgotten about this until Someone Else found it and it became Someone Else's Problem, but that feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn't fright, it was excitement. Finally something was happening.

Jim tugged off his T-shirt, wrapped it around his hand as protection, and reached for the surface of the escape pod's door. He had barely brushed the smooth metal when he pulled away with a hiss; even with the T-shirt it was too hot to touch. However, it seemed that the contact had done something: slowly, deliberately, the hatch swung open. Staring in awe, Jim barely noticed the smarting in his fingers. _I am about to be the first person in the world to see a real alien._ It occurred to him to wonder what he'd done to be so lucky—or unlucky as the case may be.

The door finished opening. Jim took a semi-shaky breath then was all business. Carefully avoiding the still hot edges, he leaned inside to find damaged-looking control panels, a chair, and in that chair…an alien? It (he?) didn't look like the little green man of drunken campfire stories; instead he looked pretty human. Jim was inclined to think it _was_ a human—until he noticed that the dark green stuff on the man's clothes and face was, in part, coming from a cut on his forehead. _Green blood_. _Okay, you've got me convinced_.

Jim knew enough first aid from his time in the service to know that moving the man could be a very bad idea—but he also knew that calling an ambulance was completely out of the question. They would probably be carted off to Area 51 and locked in a big warehouse full of wooden boxes or something. No, the best plan for now would be to get this guy to his home and then call one person he knew he could trust and who knew a bit more than just first aid.

Though, Jim considered as he raced home to get his car (the alien wasn't going anywhere and carrying him a mile and a half was not happening), they probably didn't teach much about alien physiology at med school.

/

Jim Kirk tumbled through life wishing for something more, but his best friend Leonard McCoy did not. Or at least, that's what he said. McCoy had no dreams of being what he called a 'Saturday morning cartoon hero' like Jim did. He was a practical man: he knew he wouldn't be much use in a fight and he didn't mind. Let people like Jim break heads, if they must. He was content to come in later and pick up the pieces.

A doctor was all he'd ever wanted to be and a doctor was what he was—and a damned good one too, if he said so himself.

Except when it really mattered. But although he was prone to emotional over-dramaticism—ask anyone who knew him, they would tell you—McCoy was essentially a private man and this was a private matter. The only people who knew were his boss Doctor Lloyd and the other unfortunate who'd been in the room, Nurse Jake Wettach. Probably his research partner, Doctor Kate Ranum, had heard about it too by now. She was going to need to find someone else to work with. He felt rather bad about that, but no turning back now.

They didn't know the whole story, though. That was between him and God.

Now he sat on the over-crowed city bus and wondered what he was going to do with his life.

/

Leonard McCoy tried not to jump when the cell phone in his pocket started vibrating. It had taken him long enough to figure out how to get the damn thing to do that instead of ring—he wondered how long it would take to just get people to quit calling him. He shot the lady in the seat next to him an apologetic grimace as he twisted to retrieve the stupid phone. _Don't be Lloyd, don't be Lloyd, don't be—_It was Jim.

"What." McCoy was not in the best mood today. Actually, that was an understatement because as far as shit-tastically horrid days went—and he'd had a few—this was probably about number 3 on the list.

"Hey, Bones, okay, I know it's been a while but I need to call in a favor."

"Oh god, what did you do this time?"

"Nothing! It's just that this meteorite landed in my field, except it was an escape pod thing, like from the movies? And anyway, there's this alien guy and he's hurt pretty bad I think so do you think you could get up here because I don't want to call a hospital because they'd probably just lock us up and study his guts."

McCoy closed his eyes and prayed for patience. Sometimes it was really, really hard being best friends with an utter lunatic like Jim Kirk—a man who seemed pretty normal until you got to know him and found out that he liked to do things like climb mountains without any safety equipment. For fun.

"Look. Jim," he said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone of voice, "I have had the worst day in a very long time and all I want is to go home, get drunk, curl up in a miserable ball, and cry. Is that so much to ask? So please just knock it off with the alien nonsense and tell me why you really called."

A pause. "I'm sorry Bones, but I wasn't kidding. There really is this guy who is probably an alien—his _blood_ is _green_."

"Jim, there are no such things as aliens!" McCoy snapped, losing his always tenuous grasp on patience. The woman next to him shot him a weird look. _He's nuts_ he mouthed at her, gesturing at the phone.

"I know. But he is one—and he's _hurt_. I know it's a long drive, but I'm sure you could use a vacation. I have booze…you could tell me about your terrible day after you stitch him up. I'm only trained in CPR and the putting-on of bandages—I can't really do anything for him unless you come. Please. Seriously, I'll never ask anything of you ever again, I promise."

"Yes, you will," McCoy sighed. _Bastard knows me too well._ "Okay, fine. You're damn lucky you have me, you know that?"

"Yeah, Bones, I do."

McCoy huffed into the phone, snapped it shut and shoved it back into his pocket. This was ridiculous. He could hardly run off to Iowa on a whim to-to do what? Suppose for a minute that Jim had really found a bona fide alien—what could _he _do? He was trained in human medicine, nothing else. There were a million-and-one things that could go wrong, incompatibilities, possible allergies, substances fine for humans could be poison to an alien. Stitches might do more harm than good, medication would be out of the question, if there was any inner damage to organs he would be utterly useless…and on top of all that, he would be working out of a first aid kit! Sure his first aid kit was a bit more comprehensive than your average person's, but all the same.

And if the alien, by some miracle, survived…what if it were hostile? Even if it weren't, would it wish to stay on Earth? Humans had barely gotten out past Mars (and look at how well _that_ turned out—contact lost with the shuttle and all aboard presumed dead): the technology needed to send the being home would be unthinkable!

McCoy shook his head. It was an utterly impossible situation and yet he'd promised to get there as soon as he could. Perhaps there was one positive aspect to being fired today. Maybe when he'd calmed down a bit he would admit that it had been his own fault and that it would be more accurate to say that he'd quit in a fit of pique, but the bottom line was the same: he was a doctor out of a job.

Not that it wouldn't be easy to get rehired-he could put on a tie and play nice at a job interview with the best of them—he just didn't want to. Not right now. He didn't know what he wanted to do, but going to see Jim didn't seem like such a bad idea.

/

Intellectually, Jim knew that the drive from Atlanta to Riverside took nearly a day even if you went non-stop and yet he found himself pacing around the creaky farmhouse he called home, impatiently awaiting a rap on the door. Every few minutes he peaked into the guest bedroom where he'd put the alien. He hadn't been able to do much for him save lay him on the bed and wash some of the blood off his face. This particular action had better revealed the alien's features: high cheek bones, deep-set eyes beneath peculiar upswept brows, and ears which tapered to a point. Jim supposed that if the alien's dark hair wasn't so matted with blood and his skin wasn't such a clearly unhealthy pallor, he might even be handsome, in an odd way.

Jim finally gave up any pretense and settled into a chair next to the bed, as though by sitting there he could prevent the alien from dying before Bones showed up. The bleeding was slowing, at least. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to be breathing much either.

As the summer thunderstorm raged around the house, Jim wondered why he cared so much.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Sorry for the long delay. Hope you enjoy this next installment!

**CHAPTER TWO**

Half a world away, the sun was just rising over the unhappy plains of Siberia when retired physicist Sergei Rachmaninoff's search finally came to an end. The elderly Russian often complained of insomnia and took long walks across the darkened countryside with just a flashlight, returning in time to make his family breakfast and, after eating, settle down to sleep until noon. Tonight, however, was different.

Sergei had been walking along the road in the wee hours of the morning when the sky had lit up and something big and black had come screeching and tumbling through the atmosphere and crashed several miles away. Now, Sergei knew quite a bit about space since he'd been up in it once after all, and he knew quite a bit about meteorites since they were his main area of interest besides nuclear fusion, and so he knew that what he'd seen wasn't a meteorite in the least.

He also knew that his historian wife wouldn't want to be woken up in the middle of the night to hear his alternate theory. So he walked and it was just a bit after dawn when he found himself on the edge of the crater.

The trees in the area had been flattened, the ones closest to the center practically pulverized, and in the center itself, half obscured by the dirt its impact had thrown up, lay the thing, whatever it was. Even at this distance there were two very important things that Sergei noticed, things that had him dialing one of his old space program friends almost before thinking: it was huge and it wasn't like anything humans had so far built.

His friend picked up after the second ring. "Hello?"

"Chris," Sergei began, "you are not going to believe this, but…"

/

Afternoon sunlight was streaming through the window when Jim grunted awake, still in the chair next to the guest bed. At first he wasn't sure what had woken him, but the answer came quickly in the form of a volley of raps on the front door. Jim jolted out of his seat and hurried to the front of the house, rubbing his stiff neck.

He opened the door to find McCoy standing outside on the porch, wearing an old blazer and a sour expression. He had his first aid kit with him—one of those old-style black doctor's bags, which Jim knew he had gotten as a gift from his daughter some years ago.

"Bones!" Jim cried, coming outside and putting his arm around his friend's wiry shoulders. "You came!" He felt inexplicably fond of the man.

"Yes, much as I may come to regret it." McCoy extricated himself from Jim's grip. "So where's your 'little green man'?"

"He's not that little, actually. Guest bedroom." He led the way.

"Has he regained consciousness yet?"

Jim shook his head. "No and I'm actually kind of worried about that…he doesn't seem to be breathing much."

He reached out to open the guest room door, but McCoy grabbed his wrist to stop him. "Look, Jim, let's get something straight: I'm a doctor, not a _veterinarian_, so this better not be too weird. And don't expect much because they don't teach xenobiology at Old Miss. I don't know anything about this guy's insides, I have no baseline of what's normal for him, I don't even know if 'he' is the right pronoun because god knows how they reproduce on other planets? Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Jim nodded, meeting McCoy's eyes with an earnest expression. "I know, Bones. Just do your best."

The older man sighed and let Jim open the door. "Right. Yeah."

Jim frowned to himself. McCoy was often moody, but never without reason. His curiosity would have to wait, however; there were more pressing concerns.

McCoy pointedly ignored Jim's scrutiny, focusing on his patient. The alien wasn't half as strange on the surface as he'd panicked it might be on his way here. Hours of driving past darkened scenery had given his imagination plenty of time to go wild, conjuring up images of everything from a huge grub with an inch-thick exoskeleton to an unholy cross between a jelly fish and a banana slug. He suspected this was caused by some combination of a lack of coffee and the crap music on the radio that was the only thing keeping him awake. As it was, however, this alien looked pretty human. Sure, he had elf ears and unfortunate eyebrows, but if it weren't for the very green blood, McCoy would have been fooled on visual alone.

He took the alien's pulse and temperature, finding both to be unnaturally high, possibly indicating a fever or possibly perfectly normal. He resisted the urge to just throw up his hands and instead felt the alien's long bones and torso carefully. Nothing seemed to be broken and besides the clear pounding of a heart located where a human's liver would be, everything felt remarkably familiar.

As far as he could tell, the worst injury the alien had sustained was the cut on its forehead. That, at least, was something he could deal with. Jim watched as he carefully stitched up the gash, being as sanitary as possible but probably exposing the being to every type of infection out there and more: it would have no immunity to Earth diseases, just as European explorers had not been immune to malaria when they'd first traversed the jungle. It would be just his luck if this alien, the first alien to visit Earth as far as he knew, died of a cold.

Finally he finished and straightened up, his back protesting the action stiffly. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "Well?" Jim asked expectantly.

McCoy shrugged. "I've done what I can, for what it's worth. Our best bet would probably be to get him cleaned up and make sure he's not cut anywhere else. Then just…let him lie there. Him or it. That's really all I can do." He glared at the wall. Giving up on people seemed to be a trend of his lately and he hated himself for it. After his father's death, Kate had made him stare her in the eyes. _It's not your fault_, she'd said. It was, though. She didn't know the whole story.

Jim was looking worried again, so he shook himself into action, taking out a pocketknife to cut the alien's clothes off. Not being a nurse, this was hardly his area of expertise, but with Jim's help he was able to undress the alien and sponge him-definitely him now- off. They found no more cuts in need of stitches, though there were a few shallow wounds which he cleaned and bandaged and also a number of bad bruises. Finally they put him in an old bathrobe of Jim's which almost fit and stood back to admire their handiwork, such as it was.

McCoy didn't realize he was zoning out and tilting rather dangerously to the right until Jim grabbed his arm. "Okay, Bones, come on, bed." It was a testament to how tired he was that he went without complaint.

/

As soon as he'd gotten McCoy to bed and looked in on the alien to make sure he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, Jim jumped in his pick-up and headed into town to get some groceries. While he could very easily subsist on apples, brauts, and the occasional pizza, he didn't need McCoy finding out and bitching at him for not eating very healthily, so making sure he had more in his house than the above plus crunchy peanut butter, beer, and a few jars of beets was the business of the day.

Twenty minutes later he was pushing a cart around the local Fareway. He was considering a bag of spinach leaves when someone called his name. He spun, recognizing the large, melancholy man who matched the voice. It was his neighbor Harve Kildegaard who farmed the half section across the road from his own. It was pretty easy to guess what he was going to ask about.

"Hey, Harve!" said Jim. "Missed you on Monday. You never know, those Cubs might pull through yet!"

Harve shrugged. "I was too busy to watch the game. I'll probably be there this week. Yesterday, though, what happened with your southwest quarter? I saw smoke over there. Was there a fire?" He spoke slowly and Jim took advantage of this tendency to think up an excuse. He hoped to prevent anyone from snooping around and seeing the space pod.

"No, no fire, just some sort of meteorite, I think. It's made a mess of the crops, but I'll get someone to get rid of it and salvage what I can."

"My brother's got a tow truck. I could give you the number to his business," Harve suggested.

"Sure, I'll look into it," Jim lied through his teeth. "It's been great talking to you, Harve, but I've got to run. A friend of mine's visiting, so I need to get back." He shook Harve's hand companionably, then escaped up the canned soup isle.

The crisis was averted for now, but Jim knew that someone was bound to find out about the pod sooner or later. He needed to get rid of it. Luckily, thinking about Gary yesterday had given him an idea. The only person Jim knew with any connections to the space program and possibly the government was Christopher Pike, his old marine commander. They'd kept in touch over the last few years, though he hadn't seen the older man since his term of service had ended and he'd moved back home.

Once he got the groceries out to the pick-up and was bumping back up the road, Jim dialed Pike's number.

/

It was late in Edinburgh, Scotland, but Professor Montgomery Scott was wide awake and excited. Five hours ago, he wouldn't have expected this evening to be any different from every other Friday evening since he'd started working at the University. His reputation as an electrical engineer and mechanic meant that people were always asking him to have a look at various broken things, so he'd figured he would spend the evening fiddling with molecular biologist and drinking buddy Doctor Kaehler's VCR.

However, a summons to the Dean of the Engineering College's office had put paid to that plan. Dean Craft had introduced him to Chris Pike, an older man with a distinctly military bearing, who had shaken his left hand without question and then had immediately launched into an explanation of his presence there.

Apparently, a retired Russian cosmonaut had discovered a strange vehicle crash-landed not too far from his remote house in Western Siberia. As Scotty looked over the pictures Pike had brought, he felt his excitement rising. Even from here, he could tell the vehicle was far more technologically advanced than even the most impressive space vehicle humans had ever built: the _Romulus_, which had disappeared, presumably destroyed, just as it passed Mars, and on which he had written his dissertation. He had given several possibilities for improvement, but none of the world governments had permitted their space programs to looking into them because of what a disaster and waste of money (as they saw it) _Romulus_ had been.

This, though. This was the real thing, the opportunity Scotty had been waiting for since he'd built his first successful bottle rocket at the age of five. Dean Craft watched with undisguised amusement as Pike asked Scott to come with him to Siberia and consult on the workings of the vehicle and the normally somber and shy Scott practically bounced with anticipation, asking when they could leave.

Anyway, that had been five hours ago and Scotty was still in a state of blissful excitement as he and Pike entered Edinburgh Airport and headed toward the baggage check. As they stood in line, Pike's cell phone rang.

"Kirk? Yes, yes, go on…" As the tinny voice on the other end spoke, Pike's face progressively darkened. "Actually, I'm on my way to Siberia to see what may be a crashed space ship. If what you're saying is related, we could have a bigger problem on our hands than—yes, well, call me if anything changes. Pike out."

With a thoughtful look on his face, Pike replaced the phone in his inner coat pocket. Scotty waited until they had finished with their baggage and were walking toward their flight's gate before asking the obvious question.

"A complication," Pike answered. "An old subordinate of mine, James Kirk, thinks he's found one of that ship's passengers."

"An alien?" Scotty breathed.

Pike nodded in confirmation. "And, for now, he's alive. I told Kirk to call me if he wakes up."


End file.
